The devil that will come from the killing blow could be worse than what they’ve known.

What They Say:
COBRA CIVIL WAR BEGINS HERE! The Commander is dead! Long live… Cobra Commander?! But the questions is, who will BE the NEXT Cobra Commander?! The role of Commander must be filled–now the most lethal and cunning Cobra operatives will COMPETE TO REIGN SUPREME. The winner–he who kills the most G.I. JOES–will take the reins of COBRA! Bonus: Ninja Force!!!!! Yeah, baby! 30 big pages of story at regular price! This is the place to jump on board and see what everyone’s been talking about!

The Review:
I grew up when the GI Joe toys were hitting the shelves in the 80′s and the comics hit and the TV show arrived and oh so many toys. So many toys. Those were glory days of playing with action figures with all that they had and mixing it up with Adventure People, Star Wars and Space 1999 toys. I had read the first hundred or so of the comics when Marvel put them out, but fell out of it over the years and never made it back in. I’ve been slowly reading some of the compiled versions of what Marvel put out, but I’ve wanted to see where the books are now and how they’re working with the changes in comic storytelling over the years. While this is an issue zero before the new series, it comes after a previous run that ended with Cobra Commander killed and nobody certain about who did it and what the truth of it is, especially since the Joe involved was also killed. So this book has the task of setting up the new series.

They break things down into three parts here in order to do it and that works fairly well, though it doesn’t completely sell what’s to come. The opening segment has a team of Joe’s heading into Springfield in order to see what remnants they can find there from when Cobra was fully vested in the community as its front. But it’s been a month since they pulled out and it’s a true ghost town at this point, which certainly creeps everyone out. It’s a decent little investigative op that has them looking for clues, but it serves more to introduce Krake to the reader as one of the deadlier Cobra agents out there, and to serve as a launch point for what the opening arc of the new series will be. And that’s being called a civil war, though it may be better framed another way.

What Krake does is to inspire the Cobra Council to figure out a different way to determine who will lead the troops going forward. Rather than just assigning someone, they’ve picked a small group of people that will compete to kill off the Joe’s in as great a number as possible in order to secure the position. That leads to a divisive little confrontation amongst those involve, some remotely and some in person, which is why it has that whole civil war banner on it. It’s not exactly turning the Cobra operatives and leaders on each other, but when these folks compete, there’s going to be opportunity to take out the competition as well because they’re all snakes like that.

And knowing how popular characters are, the book also spends a segment giving Snake-Eyes his due. He’s been the star character for many since the very start of the line so it’s not a surprise to see him leading a segment. This one has him tracking down some of his students who were tricked into going on an unauthorized mission only to end up mostly dead. It’s more of a bodycount list than anything else as he and Scarlet track through them in a forest, but it does lead to a bit more as we discover it’s all part of some larger plan that Cobra has to mess with Snake-Eyes before doing him in eventually. It’s more a tease than anything else and a chance just to ratchet up the “emotional” context as Snake-Eyes has to see so many of his students dead.

Release Notes:
This comiXology edition of G.I. Joe comes with the main cover as released with the print edition as well as the three alternate covers that were produced as well.

In Summary:
I’m an old school big fan of G.I. Joe but the movie that came out soured me and nothing has been out there that I can see that really says it’s a must-read or watch. It’s a show and property that I felt had a lot of resonance when it came out, and for the age that I was, but it’s a hard thing to “mature”-up in a way. I’d almost take it better if they had done away with the codenames and reworked it, but I know that’s a lot of the appeal. Sadly, most of the more recent character names and those involved here just come across as plain goofy and that takes me out of the experience. I am interested in what’s here though to see how the “civil war” goes, so I’m definitely in for a few books to see what’s what. And that’s more than G.I. Joe has been able to do in quite a few years with me.

Grade: B-

Readers Rating: [ratings]